China bought itself two more months on Monday by extending the pause on its sweeping October 2025 rare earth export controls to Jan. 10, Reuters reported, but the metal squeezing buyers hardest right now was never covered by it. That metal is yttrium, which sits under a separate set of licensing rules Beijing imposed in April 2025 on seven medium and heavy rare earths. When the pause began last November, the law firm Pillsbury listed those April rules among the measures still in force, which makes the extension a cheap gift: the October measures…